“Hold on,” she says. “June, are you having any thoughts of harming yourself? Or anyone else? Because I can connect you to a hotline—”
“No—no, I’m okay.” I’m suddenly so embarrassed. I didn’t mean to take things so far; I didn’t mean to be such a problem. “I’m not suicidal. I’m fine, I’m just—I’m having a really bad day. I just wanted someone to talk to.”
“I understand, Junie.” Her tone softens. “I can’t offer you care in another state. But we’re going to set you up with the help you need, all right? Can you be patient for me?”
“Okay,” I croak. “Yeah. That sounds good.”
“Then I’ll email you some referrals tomorrow first thing in the morning. Are you still using the same address on file?”
“I—yeah. That one works.”
“Then you’ll have some contacts in the morning. Take care, Junie.”
She hangs up. I sit cross-legged on my bed, my face pressed into my hands. I feel even worse than before. I want to disappear. Why did I fucking do that? It’s past nine on a weekday. Long past work hours. Dr. Gaily must be bitching to her husband right now—Sorry, dear, I had a former patient call; she was being a psycho—
My phone lights up. I lunge at it, desperate—but it’s not Rory. It’s an Instagram notification.
It’s from the ghost.
This time Athena is sitting in a booth at Saxby’s, sticking her tongue mischievously out over her straw. She’s wearing precisely the same outfit I saw her in at the reading, at Coco’s Coffee—the outfit I thought I saw at Saxby’s this afternoon. Lips painted scarlet. Eyes glimmering.
Spotted an old friend today. I wonder if she remembers me.
I want to scream.
I can’t take this anymore. I have to know the truth. I cannot move on. This will gnaw at me my entire life until I know, for better or worse, who or what she is.
I need release. If I can’t get help, I at least need answers. I need something to happen, or I’ll explode.
I open my phone, navigate to Athena’s account, and write: okay. You got my attention. what do you want???
The ghost is online. She responds immediately.
exorcist steps.
tomorrow night.
eleven.
Twenty-Three
ATHENA IS ALIVE.
I can think of no other explanation. The Exorcist steps are our private joke. The steep, pitch-black stairs a block off the Georgetown campus, the site where Father Karras dies in The Exorcist, are famously haunted, and I’ve always found those steps so slippery with rain and snow that I’m surprised they haven’t killed more joggers. Athena and I came here after a poetry reading the first winter after I moved to DC. She dared me to run up the iced-over stairs without stopping. I challenged her instead to a race. I bashed my knee ten steps up, and she dashed past me without a backward glance. She won.
Whatever the fuck is going on here—whatever supernatural or twisted explanation lies behind that Instagram account—it’s not some asshole pulling off a prank. It could only be Athena. Only Athena knows what this means to me. The metaphor is too symbolic—my crashing and falling, her dancing all the way to the top.
I know it’s a trap. I know that by showing up, I’m playing right into the hands of the ghost, that I’m likely putting myself in grave danger. But I have no choice. This is my only chance to find answers, and I’m desperate now for just a shred of the truth.
I play it as smart as I can. I make sure my cell phone is fully charged. I buy a utility belt and pack it with a flashlight with fresh batteries, a can of pepper spray—thanks, Diana—and a Swiss Army knife. I even buy a string of Chinese firecrackers from a sketchy corner grocery in Chinatown, because I read online that the popping noise can ward off ghosts. It’s stupid, I know, but I want to feel prepared. If Athena’s ghost tries to murder me on these steps, there’s probably no way I can prevent my fate. But I won’t go out without a fight.
I think about texting Rory, or even Brett, to leave a record of where I’m going. But if this goes the way I think it might, perhaps it’s best I leave no record at all.
I take an Uber up from Rosslyn and get out at Georgetown’s front gates. It’s a five-minute walk to the stairs, but I don’t want to entertain my driver’s questions about what I’m doing at the Exorcist steps at this hour. School’s out for the term. I’m the only one wandering campus tonight. I hurry along the quiet sidewalk of Thirty-Seventh Street, arms folded tight against the wind. It’s a moonless dark, and bitingly cold. The Potomac surges against the banks, flush with this morning’s rain. It’s all very gothic and dramatic. If I were an avenging ghost, I think, this is where I would lure someone out to kill them. All this scene needs is an ominous flash of lightning, and we might get that, too—storm clouds have been gathering all afternoon.
I’m not afraid. At this point nothing could scare me. At this point I would love for Athena to lunge out and attack me, just so I could confirm that she is real, that I’m not insane.
The steps are empty. There’s no one in sight for several blocks, and when I hurry down to the bottom of the stairs, I find only the abandoned gas station. It’s five past eleven. I double back up the steps, gasping for breath.
I feel like an idiot. Maybe Geoff was right, maybe this was a hoax. Maybe the point was only to scare me.
I’m about to leave when I hear her speak.
“It’s so good to see you again!”
IT’S ATHENA. THAT’S UNDOUBTEDLY ATHENA’S VOICE, AFFECTING THAT disinterested, so-transparently-artificial-it’s-ironic-which-makes-it-real timbre I’ve heard her employ dozens of times on radio interviews and podcasts. “It’s been aaages.”
“Athena?” She sounds like she’s standing at the top. I dash up the rest of the steps and emerge panting back up onto Prospect. The streets are still empty.
“I’m so glad you’re a fan of my work.”
What the fuck? What is she talking about?
“Athena?” I yell. “Where are you?”
“So.” Her voice comes from farther away this time. I strain my ears, hunting for the source of the sound. “How’ve you been?” It seems like it’s drifting up from the bottom of the stairs. How could she have gotten down there so quickly?
Unless she’s dead; unless she’s a spirit, flittering through the air.
“Athena?”
I hear a patter of footsteps on the stairs. Is she running from me? I want to chase her down, but I don’t know where to turn; her footsteps echo from one direction, but her voice sounds from another. I spin around, scanning the darkness for a face, a flash of movement, a clue, anything.
“What would you say is your greatest inspiration?” Athena asks suddenly.
Inspiration? What game is this?
But I know the right answers. I know what will lure her out.
“It’s you,” I shout. “You know that. It’s obviously you.”
Athena bursts into a peal of laughter. “So I guess my question is, why?”
There’s something off about her voice. I’ve only just noticed. It’s not the voice you use with your friends. It’s pitchy and artificial, like she’s putting on a performance. It’s the voice you hear from celebrities on game shows, right before they have to describe their first sexual encounter or eat a boiled monkey brain.
Is she okay? Is she being held hostage? Does someone have a gun to her head?
She asks again, in precisely the same intonation, prefacing her question with the same tinkling laughter. “So I guess my question is, why?”
“There’s no reason why,” I yell. “I took your pages, I read them, and I thought they were so brilliant—and I’ve always envied you, Athena, I just wanted to know what it was like, and I didn’t even think about it, it just happened—”
“You didn’t think you were stealing my work?” Now her voice echoes from somewhere above me. It’s strangely garbled this time, like she’s speaking underwater. It doesn’t sound at all like her. “You didn’t think it was a crime?”
“Of course it was. I know that now. It was wrong—”